Our legendary summer as the official Big Rock Grasshoppin’ Contest Winners has officially begun!  When Parker and I arrived in the ‘Peg we headed straight to the festival.

When we got there, we met up with Darlene, Big Rock’s (awesome!) Manitoba rep. She gave us our VIP passes, and took us to the VIP reception area where we got a sweet swag-bag from the festival folks, which included their lovely new reusable mugs.

 We had a few Grasshoppers, and were introduced to all kinds of important Big Rock and festival people!

The Winnipeg Folk Festival is unique in that it is held at a Provincial Park (Birds Hill), rather than taking place in the city.

This means CAMPING instead of a hotel stay! We had some trouble setting the tent up, but after about an hour of fiddling, we managed to make it stand up!

 It even stayed that way for the rest of the weekend. Success!

The campsites at the festival are INSANE! Despite our tent troubles, we were definitely happy that we chose to camp. 

Over the course of the weekend, we saw a parade complete with marching band, more than one drum circle (if you can call 200 people on bongos a “circle”), multiple temporary DIY stages, some of which were built to look like giant pyramids and sphinxes, impromptu musical sessions and live artwork, and the occasional crowd of streakers racing past.

It was brilliant, and the best way I can think to describe it is as a little prairie-style Burning Man.

As for the festival itself, we watched a ton of excellent live shows, including Jimmy Cliff, the Avett Brothers, Konono No. 1, Delhi 2 Dublin, John Hiatt, Arrested Development and Ghostkeeper.

We also really enjoyed the food backstage, it would definitely be worth it to volunteer at the fest just to eat that food all weekend!
Of course, we met a bunch of people and also spent a lot of time in the Big Rock Tavern!

Winnipeg has a really green festival and they even have compostable beer cups, so that was great.

Next up: Dawson City Music Festival! Hope to see you there!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you want to live vicariously through Parker and Jenna this summer, follow Big Rock Brewery on Twitter or visit the Grasshoppin’ Contest Facebook Page.

But, if you want to BE Parker and Jenna next summer, enter the Grasshoppin’ Contest!

After all the beer commercials were played and all the awards handed out at the 17th Annual Big Rock Eddies, there was a bit of gloom hanging over the heads of some of the staff here at Big Rock.
No doubt, the event was another success; we launched our new Gopher Lager, we celebrated the Brewery’s 25th anniversary, and everyone had a great time, but in the hours after the event something was obviously missing.
EDDIE WAS GONE!

Soon it became quite apparent that our beloved 8ft Styrofoam statue was in fact stolen.

Surveillance pictures showed an urban cowboy hauling it out the back doors of the EPCOR Centre with an accomplice not far behind. Even when we saw the security pictures, we couldn’t believe someone would want to steal our Eddie!

For weeks we waited and waited, expecting our “friends” would do the right thing and bring Eddie home, but not one phone call, email, Tweet or Facebook message. We knew we had to do something if we ever wanted to see Eddie again.

A couple calls went out to the media and everyone helped to spread the word, and then the next morning, we get a call from our faviourite cowboy.
A U of C student came forward, and admitted to taking Eddie, apologized for doing so, and agreed to face the staff and the media by bringing the statue back to the brewery and answering to the real Ed himself.

So this blog post is to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who helped us get the word out about our missing Eddie, and supporting us in getting it back.

And yes, while we certainly didn’t want Eddie to be stolen in the first place, we want to thank our culprit for bringing Eddie home in one piece…. just don’t do it again!

Big Rock's Newest Addition: Gopher Lager

Just like the critters that take over Canada’s prairie landscape every year at around this time, we too at Big Rock have found ourselves inundated by Gophers.

Not the four-legged kind though, I’ve just created my newest beer, Gopher Lager, and you’re going to love it!

As our fans already know, Big Rock already has a great line-up of beers, but most of them are ales. I wanted to include a lager in the mix, and Gopher is an easy drinking all-malt lager, that’s lighter in body but also has a nice hoppy flavour without the bitterness.

You’ll find Gopher to have a bit more character than the average lager found on the prairies. We made it with Alberta two-row barley, choice imported saaz hops and special lager yeast. Just like all our other beers, it contains no preservatives, additives, or adjuncts. The result is a clean, crisp flavour with a nice hoppy flavour and aroma but with no bitter aftertaste.

Sounds good right!? So where can you get it?
Well if you’re in Calgary during the last weekend of May, you can try Gopher at the Calgary International Beer Fest, and you’ll also find it at Lilac Fest on the same weekend.

Then at the beginning of June you’ll be able to order it in bars and restaurants throughout Alberta and by June 14^th you’ll be able to buy it in retail stores.

Look out Saskatchewan, you guys are next, stay tuned for arrival dates, and then, before you know it, Gopher is going to start rapidly multiplying and you’ll be able to get it everywhere!

Hope you like it, let me know what you think!